The impact of service quality, customer satisfaction and brand image on customer loyalty - The case of economy class passengers of Vietnam airlines
Abstract
In recent years, the world aviation business has been recording substantial prosperity in the number of air passengers which has exceeded the record of 4.1 million passengers in 2018. Vietnamese air market does not stay out of this development. With the appearance of Vietjet Air in 2013, a low-cost carrier, Vietnam Airlines has never been facing such fierce competition before, especially in the economy-class service. Therefore, this research aims at exploring different influence of service quality, passenger satisfaction, brand image on passenger loyalty regarding Vietnam Airlines economy class passenger. The research extends the research of various research findings of many authors: Hapsari et al., 2017; Namukasa, 2013; Etemad-Sajadi, 2016 by identifying the direct effect of three service quality categories: pre-flight, in-flight and post – flight on customer loyalty and exploring the influence of brand image on passenger loyalty, as well. This research focuses on research economy class passengers that have used Vietnam Airlines and Vietjet Air service at least 1 time in the last 12 months to implicitly urge respondents to compare the service between the two airlines. The research turns out to be significant in proposing reverse result to other authors. While Etemad – Sajadi (2016) proved there is an influence of pre-flight service quality and in-flight service quality on passenger loyalty, this research does not realize the same relationship as post-flight service quality is the only factor that affects passenger loyalty. Furthermore, the research outcome points out that post-flight service quality imposes the biggest influence on passenger satisfaction comparing to other service quality categories. In addition, this research proves that brand image of Vietnam Airlines is influenced by passenger satisfaction which is completely opposite to the proven relationship of Mai & Le (2014). Brand image is also an important concept of this research as interestingly, it does effect passenger loyalty. In the end, the research proposes some recommendations for Vietnam Airlines to increase passenger loyalty and for future studies to develop their theoretical framework and apply this research model in other sectors.